The question we ask ourselves (apart from where I would hide for the other two acts!) is will they be a patch on the shows in 1979 and 1980 and the answer sadly is not, so I’ll put the money towards a trip to London to see the Bridget Riley exhibition instead.

Don’t read if you don’t want to know! Thanks to people who have nodded me over the Glenn Hughes tour list (we’ve not been able to make this tour ourselves). Quite a good selection, although I might have expected one or two more Come Taste songs. As a tour it is what it is, I kind of prefer his regular solo shows when we get more of a mix and the Purple songs come as part of that, but maybe this makes more sense commercially. 1400 attended the show in Bristol according to our man on the gate with the clicker.

Stormbringer / Might Just Take Your Life / Sail Away / Gettin’ Tighter / You Keep on Moving / You Fool No One / High Ball Shooter (someone tells me this was just interpolated!) / You Fool No One (reprise) / Mistreated / Smoke on the Water / Georgia on My Mind. Encore: Highway Star / Burn

By my ready reckoner that’s five from Burn, two (or one and a few bars) from Stormbringer, two from Come Taste and two from Machine Head!

Pic of the decorated Orange amps and speakers by Jeff Breis. Glenn has just announced a second batch of shows for May next year, so they must have gone well:

Graham Bonnet is touring the UK in February 2016. To save my fingers, I’ll attach the official flyer. It’s wrap-up warm time, especially if you opt for the Skegness homecoming show. I’ve been there in the winter and it’s biting! I missed his last UK tour as I was stuck in frozen Cheshire on the afternoon of the Sheffield gig.
Graham is also doing eight shows in Australia in April which might be warmer, I might as well add that flyer as well. This is with his new band, and a studio album is in the works for Frontier Records, which will have a bonus disc of reworked oldies apparently.

His biography is nearly wrapped up and will be out early 2016. There may now be a limited edition in a hardback cover designed by Graham himself. You can read more about this and see some spreads at the publisher’s site.

The extent (sic) of Ritchie’s 2016 rock tour is now confirmed and comprises the two German dates already posted here and one UK date. Ritchie is saying that this will be it for 2016, although he has not ruled out more dates in 2017.
The good news is that having passed on Download, the promoters are now saying the UK show will be indoors at the Birmingham NEC Arena on June 25th. Tickets go on sale on the morning of November 6th. The band line up will be announced a couple of days before, but from the names being passed around on the web, comprise nobody we’ve ever heard of anyway! The NEC site link for the show is not yet live.
The German promoters have put up a Faceache page with some basic info and a bio.
Thanks to everyone for helping us with the news. Names withheld to protect the innocent!

Glenn Hughes has sprung a decent looking live tour on the UK, back to a power-trio as well with Doug Aldrich and Pontus Engborg. Just writing that and I can feel the bass slamming into me.
Glenn is promising to cover all of his career paths (which could mean a long night these days), indeed the man himself suggests, this is going to be epic. Sorry, E P I C.
Were fancying the Holmfirth gig so we can get an early tea at the Wrinkled Stocking cafe first, from the money we saved not bothering to go to the Slash support shows late last year. Thanks to Tom, Tim and Classic Rock Revisited dot com for the news.

These days the anniversaries seem to be coming thick and fast; I just had a journalist enquiring about photographs I took at the Butterfly Ball show as he was planning a 40th anniversary feature on the album… could it really be that long ago?

But interesting as that album was, perhaps for many the event we should be looking back on was the UK debut 40 years ago of Deep Purple Mk 3, on a massive and what proved to be very exciting UK tour. I was reminded of this thanks to this great photograph taken from up in the gods looking down on the group rocking out in front of a clearly appreciative crowd. It was taken by photographer Barry Plummer and I’ve been helping him sort through his images for a series of books. He worked for The Melody Maker and as such was often sent out to cover the band, the first time being in 1971, photographing both live shows and the musicians off-stage during interviews. The paper would use one or two photos, and Barry just filed the rest of his negatives away. Anyhow, one of the books is devoted just to Deep Purple and we’ll have more on the book (which is due in early 2015) soon but I got permission from the publishers to reproduce this shot. For anyone who caught this tour (I was lucky enough to see two shows) it will really bring the gigs into focus. It’s also fascinating just to look at the little bits of detail – the roll of gaffer tape on one of the amps, the support band’s drum kit shoved behind the back-line, Jon’s effects unit taped to the top of his Hammond, Ritchie’s Revox, Ron Quinton holding on to the Marshall stack, the left-handed Strat, and so on. I’m back there blissed out on the blues solo once more!

The book is one of a series from Barry’s archives coming out on ST33 books (the others feature more big names from the era), you can read a bit more on their site. We’ll be getting more details soon and discounts for Darker Than Blue readers are on the cards.

Glenn Hughes‘ new band CALIFORNIA BREED will be doing a handful of shows in the UK later this year, but supporting Slash! I’m struggling to think of Glenn supporting anyone in the UK on a tour since he left Deep Purple, so this marks a change of plan – and the new band will undoubtedly reach a much larger audience doing this than they otherwise would, as these are all large arena shows. Thanks to Mark Maddock for the news.

We’ve got a UK tour page started, post your reviews in the comments section there or email direct. The set list is on a separate page so you won’t have the surprises spoilt. Photo : the tour backdrop (Stephen Clare)

Browse by subject

I’d not forgotten that we have rolled around to an important anniversary, honest. Just shocked to realise we’d got the date wrong for all these years…! Seriously. It’s not so easy to find something new to say, particularly as I’ve been raving about this album for fifty years now myself. Many of us have […]

This photo has been floating about on the web for some time, but thanks to Mike Richards we can locate this to Newcastle City Hall on the 1980 Down To Earth tour. This is mainly because he spotted a mate in the balcony in the pic he went to school with! It was taken by […]

Our I Spy Car spotter days are behind us here at DTB so it’s taken us a while to catch up with this Nissan, badged the Highway Star. It was launched back in 1997 but wasn’t sold in the UK, except as an grey import (wikipedia says imports were “mainly driven by car enthusiasts, or […]

I assume we’re not the only ones to have used some of the current lockdown to do a bit of tidying. Simon tells us he found three dust masks in his shed while he was having a good sort out over Easter, the first time he’s been able to tackle this for over a year, […]

Derek Lawrence, Deep Purple’s first producer, deal maker, guiding light and without whom… died last week, May 13th 2020. It’s taken me a few days to get to grips with the news and put a few words together for this site. It is sometimes easy to overlook Mk 1’s contributions to the band’s catalogue but […]

This Is Rock magazine in Spain have kicked off the In Rock 50th anniversary with a cover feature in their latest issue, although inside it is just a single page looking back. Nice for cover collectors though. My thanks to Hugh Gilmour for the news, even if it is starting to make some of us […]

So exactly why should we be marking the passing of Little Richard here? Well, Deep Purple In Rock would not have been the same without Richard’s trail blazing contributions to rock’n roll for starters. Speed King in particular owes even more, with Ian Gillan quoting lyrics from Little Richard classics throughout (to brilliant effect). Deep […]

Tonight would have been Deep Purple’s live debut in Japan, the first of two shows in Osaka in May 1972. Tickets available at 1400 Yen to 2300 Yen (or 3300 Yen for a box seat). BUT the three shows were cancelled some time before due to a backlog in America where the band were trying […]

Ian Paice has joined the long list of musicians who have taken a leaf out of the younger generation’s book and begun putting material up on the web to entertain everyone, is promising more broadcasts to come. He was always entertaining on shows like Super Drumming and The Ian Paice Drum Tribe (has he been […]

This tickled us seen by Simon in a dusty shop window over in Bridlington a couple of years ago. It’s probably still there (the shop is just by the walk way at the top of the harbour). A set of strange ‘Dad’ mugs with various faux adverts on the side and themed handles. So this […]